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Wordle is a website that makes clouds of words.

http://www.wordle.net/


1. Go to the Wordle site and click on "Create".
2. A box will appear. Enter all the words you want in your Wordle in there.
  • It doesn't matter if they're all on separate lines, or separated by spaces (the number of spaces doesn't matter either).
  • If you want 2 or more words to be grouped together, put a tilda in between, like this: happy~birthday.
  • To make some words larger, repeat them. The more times a word is repeated, the larger it is.
*HINT* Before you go onto the next step, copy all the text you've put in the box. This will save a lot of time if you see your finished Wordle and decide to make a change to the words. You need to start again if you want to change the text, so if you have it copied, it's a simple matter of pasting it back into the window, then fixing whatever needs fixing.
3. Click on "Go" and your Wordle will appear (you may need to log into the server again before it loads). If you don't like the look of it, choose "Randomize" until you get one you like, or choose options from the menus at the top of the page.
4. There are 3 publishing options:
a) Print it using the "Print" button.
b) "Save to Public Gallery" - this will add it to the gallery for everyone to see (be careful of privacy issues). It will give you an embed code, but it will be very small and pretty much useless, so don't bother.
b) Take a screenshot (Prt Scr button on your keyboard), open Paint, paste it, cut your Wordle out using the tool, paste to a new Paint document, then save it as a .jpeg. (See the Screenshots page of this wiki for more detailed instructions on taking screenshots).
5. Your Wordle will be lost once you close the window, so make sure you've printed or screenshot it!

Ideas for Use:
  • Writing spelling words
  • Brainstorming adjectives for a book character
  • Identifying the key words in text
  • Father's/Mother's Day cards
  • Looking at key words in famous speeches, or poems
  • Listing student names for a blog picture
  • Synonyms list
  • Responses to art work
  • Word poetry
  • Brainstorming prior knowledge on a topic
  • Writing a list of questions the class wants to learn about
  • Recording results of a class survey visually

Here's one made by copying all 5 verses of Advance Australia Fair and pasting them into the Wordle window. It ignores all the little words, like "and" and "it".
advance_australia.JPG

Here's one showing a range of words to use instead of "said". To make this one, I typed the word "said" 8 times, then copied and pasted a list of words I found on the net and clicked "Go". I then had to go to the Language menu and select "Do Not Remove Common Words" so that "said" would be included.
said_wordle.JPG